TOUR DE FRANCE, STAGE 1
Individual Time Trial, 15.5 km, Monaco
July 4, 2009

Here he is, Lance Armstrong. And there he goes: a blue-and-yellow-and-white figure on a black-and-yellow bike streaking over the gray surface of a road in Monaco late on a summer morning, the sun's yellow pale in comparison to the shoulders of his jersey, the sky's blue like nothing more than the original idea for the magnificent tones that wrap around his back and legs. He is bent forward and low over the top of the bike, arcing himself butt to fingertips from the saddle to the handlebar like an airoilf, like a thing dreamed of and studied in prototypes and finally forged in perfection to round out the top profile of a bicycle in a way that makes it slippery against the forces of friction.

His feet each make a complete circle about 120 times a minute, or two revolutions a second, which is roughly the same cadence Usian Bolt maintains for 9.71 seconds to win a gold medal. Today, Armstrong will sustain this furious whirling of his feet for around 20 minutes. Some days he does it for six hours. This maelstrom occurs with a precision that if visible would surprise the untrained eye, and contains a daintiness that the sport's acolytes would find embarassing. At the lowest point of a stroke Armstrong's foot lies almost flat on the pedal. As his legs begin to pull up on the deal his foot starts to point down, and this oppositional change continues until his foot is almost vertical, a ballerina's pose that is imperceptible as it appears and vanishes in around one-eighth of a second. Then his foot comes over the tope of the pedal stroke. His heel drops, and the muscles of his leg begin pushing the pedal forward with visible force. ...